Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (184344)	3/30/2006 8:00:01 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Bush and Lincoln: They Just Don't Compare (3 Letters) To The Editor in The New York Times... March 30, 2006 To the Editor: Re "Lincoln's Winning Strategy for 2008" (column, March 26): David Brooks asserts that anyone running for president will have to face a "war-weary nation." I beg to differ. Although we are at war, the American people, for the most part, have no stake in this war. We are not rationing anything; there are no victory gardens; there is no big push to sell savings bonds; and I have yet to see a patriotic poster asking for the help of anyone. This president has done nothing to share the sacrifices of war with everyday American citizens. We continue to go to work and play as if there is no war. We have been told that we should just continue to live as usual, go where we want and do what we have been doing. Tax cuts continue unabated, and the administration is cutting benefits to veterans. The only things I'm weary of are the perpetual lies and the "don't worry be happy" rhetoric coming from this administration. David E. Siglin Munford, Tenn., March 26, 2006 • To the Editor: David Brooks chooses a singularly flawed comparison, of President Bush and the Iraq debacle to Lincoln and the American Civil War. Lincoln did transcend the initial meaning of the Civil War and was a kind of midwife to a new birth of freedom in America and the world. It is pretty to think that Iraq could be so transformed with just the right sprinkling of Lincolnesque eloquence, but it will not work that way this time. This war was induced by fraud, and without addressing that original wrong, we will not gain a benefit, any more than Jefferson Davis would have if he had possessed the rhetorical brilliance of Lincoln. Mark J. McPherson Rutherford, N.J., March 26, 2006 • To the Editor: David Brooks's analogy between the Civil War and the Iraq war implies that the Iraq war is deeply benevolent — a determined attempt to give Arabs the gift of democracy. This is obviously an echo of one of the administration's recent explanations for continuing hostilities. Would Mr. Brooks be taking this line if the administration had not been forced to change its story? The original war was anything but a kindness. Joel Rotenberg New York, March 26, 2006